The Secret Cow Level

[YoungDbl]

The Secret Cow Level

Hey SPF'ers!

I pm'd the mods and there is no "guide" to the cow level, so I thought we could compile all the information we know on this place for a sort of reference book.

I myself don't know much except the basics of course. I will have a few questions then maybe we can start forming a guide?

Basic basic that every one knows: You must transmute a tome of town portal and wirts leg to make the cows. You have to defeat baal on the difficulty you want to make them in. The cow king can only be killed once per difficulty, then the portal is gone for good.

Now some questions -

1. Does cow king set only come from the secret cow level? Including normal cows or boss packs?
2. Roughly how many cows are in the cow level? Does it add more per difficulty.
3. How many boss packs are in the hell cow levels? What TC do they drop? (I don't have atma here to check)
4. Does the cow king ALWAYS spawn LI no matter what the difficulty? I would hate to kill him on accident.
5. What kind of drops is the cow level famous for?
6. When does exp cut off for hell cows?


I think thats all the questions I have. Would some people be willing to help make a guide? Maybe include some build ideas optimal for the cow level? Maybe some tips on what to do with your merc so it doesn't kill the king. Maybe post some ss's of your cow level map and the route you take with it.

Thanks and give some input ... or more questions!

YD

edit: Just thought.. coudn't you make hell cows with character A and then bring in Character B. Party to let character B in, then unparty. So then B can kill the king every run while A can still make the portal? I used to do this on B.net except if A left the game then B would drop to.

I may of worded a little bad in this thread. I just woke up and my brain hurrts.

 

[Heskla]

I don't have much info to add, but I must say I like the whole idea.

 

[viable]

hi, i think this is a good idea, making a Cow Level Guide

1. Does cow king set only come from the secret cow level? Including normal cows or boss packs?

afaik, that set only drops at this secret level

3. How many boss packs are in the hell cow levels? What TC do they drop? (I don't have atma here to check)

i don't know the boss pack numbers. moo moo farm's area level is 28 for Normal, 64 for NM and 81 for Hell

4. Does the cow king ALWAYS spawn LI no matter what the difficulty? I would hate to kill him on accident.

in Hell king is always LI, not sure about NM but i think it's LI again

5. What kind of drops is the cow level famous for?

i think they're good for gem and rune drops, and milk like stamina potions :grin:

question: i wonder how other people do cow runs. for example, at which level you go to cow level. with MF gear or non-MF gear?

hope this helps, thanks for this guide occurance

 

[LD50]

Well, if there's no guide for something, it's necessary to make one!

1. Yes, only from the cow level, but all cows can drop them. The king with good odds, regular cows with bad odds.

2. Not two days ago there was another thread where this came up and IIRC it was like 350-400 cows.

3. No idea on the number of bosspacks, but ATMA says they drop armo/weap87 in hell. But since they have a low qlevel, many items can't drop there.

4. I don't know about LI, but he's always LE at least.

5. Socketed, white, gems, jewels, charms, runes. :scratch:

6. I'm under the impression that the exp from cows is so nerfed currently that you can never get good exp there.

Hmm, that's all I have.

 

[Thyiad1]

Hey SPF'ers!

I pm'd the mods and there is no "guide" to the cow level,.

The Cow Level Guide. Obviously a mirage.

Yes. My bookmark file.

 

[Eric Xanthu]

The most famous drop there was Ber until Drixx went along and popped a Zod. Might as well get that q out of the way, since no one will ever top it.

The question on the set items is great...I wasn't sure of the answer myself. Do champs/bosses drop the set with better odds than the grist?

 

[Schmaleop]

The most famous drop there was Ber until Drixx went along and popped a Zod. Might as well get that q out of the way, since no one will ever top it.

The question on the set items is great...I wasn't sure of the answer myself. Do champs/bosses drop the set with better odds than the grist?

I pretty sure some forum members had found a Jah or Cham before Drixx's Zod and Denton's Ber.
Only problem is I can't remember who they were :scratch:

 

[D2Addict]

I am not sure if the number of cows per run is constant or not. It sure seems like certain times there are many more. A lot depends on the map and the amount of open area though.

Experience for cow runs in 1.09 is very good all the way up to level 95. The players 64 option helps too.

 

[YoungDbl]

Im talking 1.11b.

 

[viable]

Im talking 1.11b.

I think thats all the questions I have. Would some people be willing to help make a guide? Maybe include some build ideas optimal for the cow level? Maybe some tips on what to do with your merc so it doesn't kill the king. Maybe post some ss's of your cow level map and the route you take with it.

Thanks and give some input ... or more questions!

YD

more input doesn't hurt. :wink3:

and a guide with different versions in it could be better in my opinion

 

[GuraKKa]

1. Does cow king set only come from the secret cow level? Including normal cows or boss packs?

You can only get parts of the Cow King's Leathers set from Cows (not only the Cow King though)

2. Roughly how many cows are in the cow level? Does it add more per difficulty.

I dunno if more are added per difficulty, but Urlik's Rune Finding Guide asumes an average of 480 cows per Moo-Moo Farm clear. (and he did a really good math work on that guide)

3. How many boss packs are in the hell cow levels? What TC do they drop? (I don't have atma here to check)

No idea about how many packs... You can look with Atma's Drop Calc the probabilities of base/unique/set items you are interested...

4. Does the cow king ALWAYS spawn LI no matter what the difficulty? I would hate to kill him on accident.

He spawns with LE always in all dificulties, that makes him always LI on Hell.

5. What kind of drops is the cow level famous for?

I think cows are ran more for XP (at low-mid lvls) than drops, but they drop good quantity of gems, charms, runes (you have the best probability for ZOD drop at Hell Cows, because of the massive number of cows and the easiness to kill them), and if you are lucky you may find a really nice Rare/Set too

6. When does exp cut off for hell cows?

I reached up to lvl 91 with an Amazon especially built to run Cows, and exp droped so much that it's nearly imposible to get lvl 92 at the Moo-Moo Farm (lvl 90-91 was hard too, but doable)

edit: Just thought.. coudn't you make hell cows with character A and then bring in Character B. Party to let character B in, then unparty. So then B can kill the king every run while A can still make the portal? I used to do this on B.net except if A left the game then B would drop to.

Maybe you can, but I think it's not worthy to run Cow King, you should run another SuperUniques/Boss instead, depending on what are you looking for...

 

[Cattleya]

Hey SPF'ers!

I pm'd the mods and there is no "guide" to the cow level,.

The Cow Level Guide. Obviously a mirage.

Yes. My bookmark file.

In my defense, I never said there wasn't a guide. For the record, here's what I said. :grin:

We don't have one in the SPF. I don't know if one of the other forums have one, though. I don't see a problem with posting a question. If someone knows of a guide, they can give you a link to it that way. :wink3:

 

[Thyiad1]

Slacker. You should read *all* the stickies. And have them memorized. :tongue: *runs from Mod stick*

 

[sirpoopsalot]

I think really valuable info might be pointers for "herding" cows.

I haven't farmed them enough to get much of a feel for herding, but there have got to be some "tricks" for teleporting and non-teleporting cowrunners, and any person with interest in regular cow-runs might find this helpful. I know my LF 'zon could certainly perform faster if I practiced more, but if someone posted some strategy, I might need less practice to be worth a darn.

Actually, perhaps a section on some good builds to run with could be nice (LF 'zon, Litesorc, Blizzsorc, and any others), as well as a little bit of a strategy approach (i.e. Blizzy's stay away from the fort to avoid killing the king, LF 'zon should definitely work on herding since LF works best with large groups of enemies, etc.)


... just some ideas

 

[D2Addict]

Herding cows is simple overall. They can 'see' you at a pretty good distance so you can just run by some groups or around in a circular pattern to pack a bunch in then wipe them out. It can get really dangerous though due to the numbers you get right around you. You can do a similar tatic with teleport as well. It is nice to wipe out large groups but looking thru the drops for good stuff can be painful.

Best runners depends on version you are playing. 1.09 is defintely LF zon and Nova sorceress at top.

You can't always stay away from the pen. Sometimes the portal will be inside it. When possible it is best to save the pen for last unless you have a king killer. Then you can lure him off and loot and kill all the other cows except him.

 

[Eric Xanthu]

The basic running pattern to herding is a sequence of circles or figure-8s that rounds a few smaller packs into one large, following pack. A fast method is to run right between three packs, break out the other side just as the "seam" is collapsing, and then loop back around as they converge on you. Voila, one large pack.

Ironically, I was going to say that cows DON'T see very far and will stop following you if you get about 2 screens away (that is, one full screen length off-screen), but that's the perspective of a LFzon trying to get 200 cows in one pack.

One thing that I think should be mentioned is merc/valk myths. They don't make herding harder per se, they just force you to do it differently. Cows will flock to a valk instead of following you. Is this a problem? Yes, but only if you don't adapt to it. Loop back around your valk and the ones that were following you now stick to the valk. Basically it means you have a fixed point to herd around, and you can actually get a much larger pack together this way. "Peace" does this for you for free on a pretty decent %.